Annotated Outline 4-6

Chapter Four: Aftermath (6127)

1. Dazed and Confused (1698) (11/6): Aaron's awakening in the wrecked car. Establishes that he's out of contact when there is no cell service. Establishes his disorientation. Creates the question of whether he is lucid or hallucinating when he stumbles on the meeting, and also casts doubt on his hearing, affected by the crash. I think that Aaron's call after the accident will be completed to Jack, who is at the game. Aaron doesn't realize he's deaf, just that the call didn't go through. Looking in the church. Establishes that there is a window that is in viewing distance of the rendezvous place even though it is not used at this time. Establishes that the church is empty and still. Establishes that the church is unlocked. Aaron's awakening in the foyer unable to hear again. Creates doubt over whether he ever saw or heard what he thought he did. Introduces Pol as a human character who is caring and helpful. Casts into question whether or not there is cellular service because she calls 911. Distracts Aaron from his quest when EMTs arrive and take him to the hospital.
   jason said... "It was lighter in the sanctuary. [...] but there had to be chairs up on the chancel someplace."
   
   Being a secular humanist, born-and-bred, I have to admit I'm not all that familiar with church architecture. Not that I really need to be, but I'm finding myself more curious about the church itself than about Aaron's situation. It might help, just to give me a frame of reference for the church so I can stop thinking about it, if you could have Aaron absent mindedly notice some detail or other and identify to himself whether the church was catholic, lutheran, methodist, or baptist. Given that you've referenced several christian sects already, then at least giving the church's affiliation would help identify it.
   Nathan Everett said... I think that I'll actually make that more ambivalent. He can't identify the denomination. He might be able to identify some architectural features, like gothic arches around the stained glass windows, but he's going back to do some research on the church and can't even find a property tax record in the auditor's office. There's no mention of what kind of church it is until much later. But I'll emphasize that in this chapter and just say it must be some independent non-denominational church.


2. Hospital (995) (11/6): Establishes Jack at the hospital and Aaron’s continued disorientation. Introduces drugs to the mix and his broken ribs.


3. A Visitor (1276) (11/6): Pol visits Aaron at home. Establishes a lingering concern for Aaron on Pol's part. Gives them a chance to talk. Establishes that she is unwilling to talk about what he saw the night before.


4. Dinner with the Congresswoman (2161) (11/6): Establishes that Pol intends to keep an eye on Aaron in one way or another. She takes charge of getting him settled, making dinner, talking about his life. Leaves us with a spoken and an unspoken invitation as Pol invites Aaron to come to join her staff.
   jason said... "Aaron Case, come to work for me and I will show you how we can change the world. Think about it and give me a call."
   I think she needs to make a stronger argument than this. One that addresses some of the specific horrors that Aaron has lived through. Something like:
   "Come work for me and I will show you how we can change the world. Without getting shot at. Without losing people we care about. Think about it and give me a call."
   I mean, changing the world is great and all, but Aaron already knows that if he really wanted to, he could get back into his old activist role once again. He doesn't, because he perceives the risks (both physical and emotional) to be too great, to be more than he can withstand. So Pol needs to make an offer that appeals to those perceptions. Offering him the opportunity to be influential without the risks and suffering.
   Nathan Everett said... I like that, and you hit just at the moment where Aaron is sitting in his chair thinking about what she said. It probably won't show up in this chapter, but in the next the quote will come more to the heart of the matter.

Chapter Five: Checking it out. (5427)

1. Sunday, Sunday (2257) (11/7): Aaron is through sleeping all the time. Settles in with laptop to do some research. Decides to look up Pol and her politics. Discovers that she is liberal and matches a lot of his own concerns. He’s impressed and interested. Jack and Theresa come to visit. Theresa exclaims about how much food he went through. Jack and Aaron discuss Pol’s offer and Jack encourages Aaron to consider it.
   jason said... "So delivering a speech in Franklin was squarely within her district if at its very frontiers."
   Squarely, but also at its frontiers? I'd suggest deleting "squarely".
   "She was gone in a whirlwind, content to be mistress of her domain in the kitchen."
   I think we get by now that her domain is the kitchen. Sort of feels redundant to say it again here.
   "...Everybody in Washington is twenty-something years old. I tell you they’re looking for seasoned talent again."
   "Yeah, well, I’m pretty well seasoned, all right..."
   It's funny. I mean, I know in my head that Aaron has to be in his 50s by now, but I have trouble really picturing him that way. I'm not sure why. Maybe this is because readers have a tendancy to project themselves onto un-defined aspects of characters. Maybe other people read him differently. But every time his age comes up, I have to remind myself that he's not just in his late 20s or early 30s. Perhaps some of the earlier chapters could use to define Aaron more specifically so that our initial impression of him is more accurate.


2. Dreaming (3173) (11/8): The insurance agent calls on him. Hands him a check for more than what Aaron thinks his car is worth and says that he’ll take care of it from there on out. Lucky he wasn’t killed in the accident and tells him to bill any additional medical care. Aaron is overwhelmed at the agent’s speed and generosity. Agent lets slip that he was tipped off to move fast by a powerful person. Aaron asleep in a restless dream in which he recalls other portions of the conversation, but he is overlapping Pol into the picture. Believes the drugs are acting again. Gets up and paces. Gets his phone. Re-enacts the events. Flips the phone to camera mode and sees a picture of the window in the phone. Calls Jack and asks if he’d pick him up to go to Franklin in the morning.
   jason said... "Aaron looked at the pictures sadly. He bought that car used in San Francisco in ’76 when he was dating Angela. He’d babied it along for nearly thirty years and here it was a mangled bit of scrap metal. The car was thirty-five years old, not quite enough to qualify it as a classic."
   He drove into a telephone pole in an 1970s sports car, totalled the car, and walked away? Let's see, he bought it used in '76, so figure it's probably a 1973 model at the youngest: lap belts were mandatory, but he wouldn't have had shoulder belt, safety glass, crumple zones, or airbags.
   Hell, he didn't even have a catalytic converter, and he'd probably had to have some work done on it to retrofit it for unleaded gas when they stopped selling that!
   I have a little trouble with Aaron getting off with only some broken ribs in that major of an accident in a car with essentially no safety features. On the other hand, the lack of a shoulder belt certainly made it easier for him to throw himself down onto the seat in a hurry before the telephone pole tore the top off the car. Perhaps in an ironic twist, the lack of such modernities as that saved his life.
   If so, that probably deserves an explicit mention. Or maybe it was the aliens--maybe they had their eye on him all along, maybe they caused the crash, and used their advanced technology to either reduce the severity of the crash, or instantly heal _most_ of Aaron's letal injuries mere moments after the crash. But not all of them. That would be too obvious.
   Whatever the case, the fact of the car's age and Aaron's relative lack of injury (particularly considering his age) raises questions.
   "There was even a yellow rubber duck with a number on the bottom that he’d once caught at a carnival."
   
   Cute. :)
   
   "Okay, she did absolutely nothing illegal. She simply called his insurance company for him. Said he needed to see how good they were to clients."
   I think you're missing an 's' in there...
   "Aaron was exhausted again. It might be time for more sleep. A little more Vicodin."
   Admittedly I've never had a broken rib, so I don't know how much it hurts, but it seems like Aaron's taking an awful lot of Vicodin. And that's the stuff that doctors on TV dramas are always getting hooked on. Are you setting Aaron up for a painkiller habit?
   "God through Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden didn’t he?"
   Threw. Spell-check won't tell you about it, so I thought I would...
   Nathan Everett said... Interestingly enough, this accident is one of those things I pulled from life. I survived it in '74 in a '72 Fiat. The wife du jour did too. I didn't even have the broken ribs that time. However, I have had broken ribs in the recent past, and Vicodin was a miracle drug. They hurt with literally every breath you take and if I have a problem with what I've written here, it's that I'm moving him into action too soon. I remember, since I'm reminded on a daily basis, that it was while I was on Vicodin that I agreed to adopt a retired Greyhound. It really plays with your mind if you are taking enough of it.

Chapter Six: The platform (6264)

1. Strategy (807) (11/9): Pol and Alex discussing the situation in the inner office. Allusion to old way of doing things makes it sound like they might be in a criminal activity. Establishes that there is conflict between Pol and her “superiors”.
   jason said... I have trouble believing the dialogue when Pol gets Alex to back off about Aaron. Partly because the emotions seem to slam back and forth at lightning speed from one end of the spectrum to the other, and partly because as soon as Alex gives in, Pol basically says "Well, I was bluffing anyway." Maybe something more like this:
   “We don’t do things that way anymore, Alex. And don’t you dare suggest it,” Pol turned on him. “If anything happens to him I’ll torpedo the whole operation and you can explain the scars to the architect.” Pol glared at Alex as if daring him to challenge her.
   “Pol,” Alex said, a nervous edge creeping into his voice. He raised a hand slightly, to forestall her saying anything more before he could respond. “He means that much to you?”
   “He does.”
   Alex regarded her carefully for a long moment. “All right. I'll back off.” Really, what choice did he have? If Pol’s threat was at all serious...it was too horrid a prospect.
   “Thank you. You just have to give me a little leeway now. I know now who I am and I have to feel my way into my responsibilities. You’ve trained me well, now let me do my job.”
   “Okay, Pol,” Alex sighed. “Just be careful. These things have a way of backfiring. I’ll be near enough to help if you call.”


2. Investigation (1442) (11/9): Aaron and Jack decide to revisit the scene on the way to Franklin, recording every detail he can to refresh his memories. More suspicions aroused when Aaron can’t find a trace of where his car went off the road. The church door is locked, further rousing Aaron’s doubts of what he thinks he remembers. He and Jack head for Franklin.


3. Leadership (1691) (11/10): Pol’s Martin Luther King Jr. Day speech. Description and effect.
   jason said... "Oh, understand, I know the difference between a self-sacrificer and a murderer."
   I think that "a martyr and a murderer" would be stronger. Not only alliteratively, but it draws a clearer distinction between the fact that kennedy, kennedy, and king were murdered, while atta and al shehhi explicitly chose to die. I think it's an important distinction to make clear, because Pol treads on very thin ice, with respect to not losing the crowd, when she makes any sort of comparison between American political icons and terrorists.
   "As long as the world is divided into haves and have nots, the have nots there will be people dying for what they believe and killing for it as well."
   Only, the Kennedy's were definitely haves. Not quite sure, rhetorically, how to make this stronger without changing your intent. Maybe something like "As long as the world is divided into haves and have nots, there will be people willing to die--and to kill--for what they believe."


4. Employed (2329) (11/10): As Pol and Alex leave the Aaron and Jack meet them. Pol introduces Alex and talks in private with Aaron for a few minutes. Aaron pulls out resume and says that he’s interested in applying for the writing job. Aaron & Pol talk asking Jack to follow them to the airport. Pol tells Aaron that the job is on her campaign staff. Aaron tells her that its for Governor. Pol says she sees they understand each other very well.

Annotated Outline 1-3

There have been few posts here as I have been writing furiously. I'm now over 51,000 words into the story and 75,000 is looking like a realistic goal. I've been updating my chapter outline as I go with summaries of word count and content and want to get it posted here. But I also want to capture Jason's comments on the story as it has been progressing. He has keen insight, good writing talents, and great comments, so I want to capture them all together in context of the outline. I hope that when I start re-writing, I'll be able to use these notes to refine what I've written, even though I'm not really going back during November to make corrections.

Chapter One: Interviews in the Retirement Home. (7148)

1. Interview (1897)(11/1): Norma Parson's chicken scratch story. Sets the stage regarding Aaron's profession. Deals with the difficulty of telling what parts of oral history are dependable and what it is difficult to validate. Establishes introduction of Mad Aunt Hattie and how you "can't believe what she says."
   Jason said... "caret" and "nonegenarian". I'd nit-pick a few commas and such as well, but a nice start!


2. Poker (2909) (11/1): Setting up the interview and discussing the job with Jack. Introduces Mad Aunt Hattie and her own quirky view of herself. Establishes mentor relationship with Jack. Sets up use of cell phone in Aaron's business. I need to elevate Jack's position a bit as both friend and mentor to Aaron. First of all, the weekly poker game needs to be more than a bunch of old guys playing cards and shooting the bull. These guys need to be savvy businessmen and civil servants who use the game as much for their own agendas as for recreation.
   jason said... "She was like a mother to him. In fact, more real than his biological mother who died when he was a preteen."
   "Preteen" in this sentence bothers me. Since the perspective of the story is so centered on Aaron, a lot of the narrative reads like Aaron's thoughts. I can only assume that's intentional. Thus, this particular sentence just doesn't sound right. Aaron would never think something like "she died when I was a preteen." He'd think "she died when I was eleven," or something like that. I just can't imagine the age not being very specific to him.
   Also, you're missing an "f" in "I pulled a shirt of a rack and looked up..."


3. Mad Aunt Hattie (2342) (11/2): First Mad Aunt Hattie interview. Introduces the concept of her guardian angel and how utterly charming Hattie is.
   jason said... "Funny how you could see the future, or the past, if you learned how to really look at someone." This line makes me suspect that Hattie is going to turn out to be the missing girl, somehow, through a time travel twist or somesuch. The fact that the missing girl was last seen when she was 9 and that Hattie was 9 when she fell in the stream only re-enforces that. Don't know if that's what you want me thinking, but there it is.
   Nathan Everett said... I think it's more along the lines of parallel structure. There might be a clue to the identity of the 9-year-old, but I don't think there is a real connection. Interesting idea though.

Chapter Two: Meet the players. (5493)

1. Battleground (1516) (11/2): I think there will probably need to be a scene that gets closer to the kind of coalition that exists among the industries along the lakeshore. The harbormaster is not the one calling the shots in terms of his disagreement with Pol, but is receiving motivation from the steel mills and oil refineries that stretch from Michigan City to Chicago. Maybe Nina’s boyfriend is working with them.
   jason said... "Neighbor fought neighbor over whether to switch to daylight savings time or to stay on real time." In one of those little known but true facts, it's actually called "daylight saving" time, in the singular. And personally, I'd have fought on the side of the traditionalists in that one...
   jason said... Couple more thoughts:
   1. I'm not clear on who the two sides were in the "battle of burns ditch". I can infer that the other side was environmentalists, but that's not clear, and back in 1960, well, that inference may not be right.
   
   
   2. "I don’t want anything we’re doing to come anywhere near that witch. She’s been sniffing around our butts like a dog as it is." Go ahead and call her a bitch. "Witch" in this context, smacks of over-dubbed dialogue in movies that have been shown on TV, where you can't miss the swear words they've tried to hide, and where they're not fooling anybody. Also, "bitch" resonates better in a double-meaning sort of way with the "sniffing like a dog" line.
   
   Nathan Everett said... Yeah. I figured out the Daylight Saving Time, too. Old habits die hard when everyone who says it says it wrong.
   I fixed the bitch.
   I'll have to make the thing about the forces who were trying to turn the whole area into a National Park a little clearer. It was definitely one of the wierder environmental battles that we've seen in this country. Roughly equivalent to cutting old growth forests in the Northwest.


2. The Congresswoman (1168) (11/2): Establish that Pol is a congresswoman and is assembling a campaign staff. Concern about Port of Indiana.


3. Uncle Alex (906) (11/3): Introduce Alex as an advisor who calls her back to Indiana for a meeting. Pol is called for a meeting. She will be running for Governor.
   jason said... This is getting interesting. I like the way you have three main things going on, and as yet no suggestion of how they tie together. That certainly builds my curiosity!


4. Chief of Staff (1903) (11/3): We need to see Nina interacting with her staff. Pol is a US Representative. That opens up the scenery a little bit, too, with Nina coordinating offices both in Washington DC and in Indiana. Nina is attempting to hire an old boyfriend/classmate as the new press manager for Pol. There is some interest that she might rekindle the romance, but also that she is interested in having him "report to her." She has some real power issues. Follow Nina's story a little more closely to find out she is a Political Science graduate from Purdue University. Her goal is to become chief of staff to the President of the United States. She is counting on Pol to get her there, or close enough to it that she can jump to a winning candidate. She is a classic king-maker. She wants the power, but not the position.
   jason said... Ok, I'm a bit confused. In 2A, the implication is that Marvin was going to be the one to get the bill moved to Commerce. But here Marvin is saying--with some apparent sincerity--that it wasn't him. Was it Brian? Now I'm not clear on what Brian's function in 2A was supposed to be. Who really got the bill moved? Is Marvin now just lying to Nina?
   Nathan Everett said... Yeah. This surprised the heck out of me, too! All I can say is "hang in there." It really does have meaning and is integral to the main string in the story.

Chapter Three: Taking Care of Business (6476)

1. Research (2983) (11/4): Open with some resolution regarding the missing girl. Play out the first scene with her. Show Aaron at work as an investigative researcher. This is why they pay him dollars to do the research.
   jason said... Don't mention "Bluetooth", specifically. It is enough to say "Wireless earpiece". Bluetooth will, probably sooner than you think, sound dated. I remember when I read "Twistor" (the sci-fi novel penned by UW physics prof John Cramer), that he made liberal reference to what was, at the time, the going network for e-mail and file sharing: BITNet. You remember BITNet? Hardly anyone does, and in fact, by the time his novel was published, the Internet had taken hold and was clearly the preferable and superior alternative. His novel was dated before most people even read it. He included an author's note to the effect that he suspected "BITNet" wouldn't last, and that readers should take it as a placeholder for whatever the network of the future turned out to be. Fine, but why use the word if you know it's going to be wrong? Why didn't he just refer to the network generically, and let the reader fill in the specifics? I can only speculate on that, but what remains with me to this day is the object lesson on being as non-specific as possible when it comes to naming technologies.
   Nathan Everett said... Yes, I agree. No specific names on technology. This story takes place today, or essentially it starts in January 2006, but it still doesn't need to tout today's technology any more than I'm trying to invent future tech. Good point.


2. Guardian Angel (2531) (11/5): Mad Aunt Hattie's story. Introduces the idea that things aren't what they seem. Provides motivation for investigating. Establishes relationship between Aaron and Hattie so that they have grounds to continue meeting together as she progressively reveals more of her story through Aaron's repeated visits.
   jason said... Two comments on this section: one, I feel a little cheated on the missing-daughter plot. It's finished already! It was too easy to be over already. Now that it seems to be wrapped up and it still doesn't seem to be related to the rest of the plot, I'm scratching my head wondering why you bothered to write all that. I'm not sure if it would be an effective solution to simply move the reunion scene to later--just to put more space between Aaron's meeting with Janice and the reunion--but it might help.
   "And one boy stood out in my eyes like a bright start on a dark night."
   I perceive Hattie as a very poetic person, and it seems to me like she would say something a bit more specific, with more poetry, in this analogy. I like the celestial reference, but maybe something like "...like Venus on a dark night" might work better. Of course, Venus is a female figure, so maybe Mars, except Mars is a martial figure, so maybe Jupiter (which can be very very bright indeed when it is at opposition), although now that's sounding a little forced. I don't know. But there has to be some start or planetary reference that would work here. After all, people who grew up in the roaring 20s had much more exposure to the glories of the night sky than we with our light pollution do. The stars and planets should have figured larger in their mental landscapes than they do in ours.
   Nathan Everett said... Good. When they come back into the story, you'll be surprised!


3. Accident (968) (11/6): Aaron's investigation following Hattie's instructions and accident when lightning flashes. Creates the cliff-hanger for turning to the next chapter.
   jason said... "He labeled the cassette from his recorder and filed it in the row of interviews."
   I thought he had a digital recorder? Shouldn't he be copying a file to his laptop instead or something like that?
   "strike the bonnet of the car"
   Is Aaron British all of a sudden? Or is "bonnet" (vs. "hood) an Indiana-ism that I'm unaware of?
   Also, how does a (presumably vertical, as you haven't told us otherwise) telephone pole rip the top off of a car?
   Nathan Everett said... Okay. Needs some better descriptive words. I thought this section was going a little fast. Yes, audio file should be copied onto laptop. In fact, he's coming back to the laptop in chapter five and I don't want a bunch of labeled cassettes in his briefcase for reasons that will become obvious later on. Bonnet?? LOL!!! I couldn't remember the word "hood" while I was writing believe it or not!
   Having been in exactly this auto accident a number of years ago, when the car slides down an embankment, even with the forward momentum, it tips. The car is almost at a 90 degree angle when it encounters the pole which is why Aaron is climbing out over the passenger door. Obviously, I need to rework this description. It was so familiar to me that I didn't bother to describe it adequately for you.
   Thnx!

Nina's "Boyfriend"

I've decided I need a name for Nina's boyfriend. He's working more centrally into the storyline as part of the shipping and steel industry's subterfuge. He's a lobbyist for the Steel Industry in Washington DC, but he's also from Indiana and went to school with Nina at an Ivy League school (TBD). So, I need a hoosier name. I believe that this guy was a handsome basketball player, both in highschool and college. That means he needed to go to a pretty big high school with a good academic reputation as well as a hot basketball team. I'm thinking Indianapolis Arlington: small school academies, competitive basketball team every year, and good reputation as a school.

The boyfriend's name is Marvin Jackson. He is a bit of a bad boy, moving into politics when his knee prevented him from making the pros. He's lived all his life having to play all sides of the game and you never quite know who he is ultimately going to support and who he's going to stab. If he has any regrets with his current situation (highly paid, prestigious, plentiful women) it is that he never really made use of his journalism degree. He has his weaknesses, but he's careful not to show them.